


The One With the Deepest Darkest Fears

by ghostnebula (gghostnebula)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, But also pretty ambiguous, But hey bring on the torture, Depending on Your Definition of Happy, Eddie Kaspbrak Whump, Eddie Whump, Illusions, Injury, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Gore, Mind Control, Puppeteering?, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier Whump, Slight Mindfuck, This ain't happy I'll warn you now, Torture, Werewolves as a metaphor for homosexuality, Whump, so I wish you luck, they're still kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22904728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gghostnebula/pseuds/ghostnebula
Summary: The beast laughs, giddy and vicious. “Oh, Richie,” It simpers, “I’m not going to hurt him.” His frantic breathing slows only minutely, watching Eddie writhe in the grasp of the monster, making promises heknowsIt has no obligation to keep, smiling at him all cruel and unsettling and falsely amiable.“Youare."(Or, the one where Pennywise makes Richie torture Eddie)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 17
Kudos: 136





	The One With the Deepest Darkest Fears

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I am SO sleep deprived please take this and please leave me a comment to fuel me.
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS FOR:  
> -Torture  
> -Eye trauma  
> -Lots of blood  
> -Choking/strangling  
> -Internalized homophobia  
> -Mentions of vomit (no actual vomiting)  
> -Sad???  
> -Character death (kind of??)
> 
> I mean you probably already have a pretty good idea of what you're getting yourself into anyway lol

* * *

Clown? Check.

Eddie? Check.

Dark, damp, _dank_ cistern? Check.

And here, Richie could have sworn that about one millisecond ago he was climbing down a well with the rest of the Losers. Did he fucking teleport? _Where the fuck is he?_

**_Its_ **_lair, probably._ Which is not a very helpful thought to have at all, considering it’s just him and Eddie here and neither of them are armed with anything but pottymouths and gumption at the moment. 

There's the beast Itself, grinning down at them from Its backlit platform (hellfire, it looks like, and that’s probably accurate), eyes glowing a disconcerting gold. 

“What the fuck?” Eddie says, looking over his shoulder at Richie as he, too, tries to get his bearings. 

“Hiya, Eds,” Pennywise trills, baring teeth like razors down at them as that horrid smile stretches impossibly wide across Its face. 

Richie staggers to his feet, stuck in some kind of half-daze that makes it difficult to control his limbs, and freezes when he spots the display floating, silent, high above them, where a faint trickle of daylight leaks through to make the tremble in Eddie’s shoulders _just_ visible. 

_The kids._

His mouth is so dry he struggles to get the words out, but he’s worried if he doesn’t speak -- if he doesn’t try to make light of the situation -- he might just vomit instead. Every nerve in his body pulses with a fear he didn’t know he was capable of. It sears under his skin, up his spine, needles at his bones. Floods his mouth (gets all tangled up in the part of his brain that turns everything he thinks and feels into something _else)_ and comes out as, “Get your Ronald McDonald-looking ass the _fuck_ away from us.”

This is, no surprise, the exact wrong thing to say.

It springs at them and Richie’s conflicting instincts to _run the fuck away_ and to rush forward and drag Eddie out of harm’s way just end up negating each other as he stands rooted to the spot. His heart burns in his throat. His hands go cold. It lands just close enough to Eddie, who is also frozen with fear, to reach out and--

“Don’t fucking touch him!” Richie shouts in the same moment Eddie shrieks, “Get the hell off of me!” as the clown’s hands clamp around his upper arm and his throat and spin him around to look directly at Richie. Suddenly neither of them are frozen anymore, and as Eddie kicks and jerks against the grip It has on him, Richie lunges forward to-- to--

_Do something. Anything._

To not let his own fear be the cause of his friend’s pain. 

Just like that, the bloodstained gloves burst open at the seams -- something in him whispers a frantic plea about _Bev’s_ well-being, about the deep red blood, something he can’t quite hear over the visceral dread that pools in his gut now --as clawed hands of scant, coarse fur erupt through the fabric. The clown’s face stays the same; the off-white suit and orange pom-poms and manic, cruel eyes stay the same, and Richie is abruptly reminded of their misadventure in the Well House only a few weeks ago and of the same paws that had made their appearance back then, before his mind forces to the surface the memory of several weeks before even _that --_ of screaming his fool head off while Bill _tore_ down Neibolt Street with Richie riding double on the back of Silver, of blood dripping into his eyes and a ringing in his ears and the snarling, spitting monster whose foul breath suffocated him no matter how fast they travelled. The _him-_ monster, _RICHIE TOZIER_ stitched onto the Derry High jacket and seared into his brain.

_He’ll never be a monster like that,_ he’d sworn to himself, before passing out in the middle of the street. 

Those claws dig into the soft flesh of Eddie’s arm and press dangerously close to his jugular, and all it takes is the touch of one knobbly, elongated finger to his throat for Richie to freeze in his tracks. “What’s the problem, Rich? Come and get him.” One claw, fit to cut through glass, trails a frail line from under one ear and all the way across his throat to the other, leaving only the faintest pink mark _(like a terrible, painted-on smile)_ while Eddie sucks in shallow breaths to keep it from cutting any deeper.

Richie’s lungs seize under the force of his panic and he wonders, briefly, if this is how Eddie feels when he has an asthma attack -- can’t get enough air into his body, and his head swims, and that only makes it _harder_ to breathe (makes his throat feel too small, too tight, his chest feel too cramped). “Stop it!” he cries, struggling for air, hands curling into fists at his sides. He doesn’t dare step closer, not when it would be so easy for It to just-- _No._ “Leave him alone. Don’t-- don’t _fucking hurt him!”_

The beast laughs, giddy and vicious. “Oh, Richie,” It simpers, “I’m not going to hurt him.” His frantic breathing slows only minutely, watching Eddie writhe in the grasp of the monster, making promises he _knows_ It has no obligation to keep, smiling at him all cruel and unsettling and falsely amiable. None of this feels real and his head is all fogged up inside and he can barely figure out where he _is,_ let alone what’s _happening._ He wants to lunge at the fucking _thing_ and tear Eddie away from It but he can’t-- _can’t--_

_“You_ are,” It says, so soft he almost doesn’t hear it, and Richie can’t make sense of the _confusion-relief-foreboding_ when It shoves Eddie towards him and sends him sprawling onto the slimy concrete, skinning his elbows and knees on the way down. Richie would _never--_ he knows this; the clown _must_ know this; and Eddie _certainly_ knows this. Richie Tozier is a lover, not a fighter. The only thing that will drive him to violence is a killer clown trying to hurt his friends.

He _knows_ this, so when he feels a weight materialize in his hand so suddenly that it startles him, and he looks down to find himself holding a rusted knife with a blade roughly the size of his own forearm, he scoffs. “What the hell do you think I’m gonna do with _this?”_ he tries to ask, but finds that his mouth simply won’t move to form the words. His empty hand flies up to touch at his lips and jerks back at the feeling of the many criss-crossing threads pulled taut there. There’s the phantom-sensation of a needle pulling through his skin but he doesn’t remember it happening.

Eddie comes to a full stop in the process of standing and rushing back over to Richie, gaze flickering between the knife (it’s in a state bad enough to strike a fear of lockjaw into _Richie,_ let alone how Eddie must feel about it) and the stitches. “Richie?” he breathes, halfway to standing, curling in on himself. 

He fully intends to drop the knife and rush to Eddie’s side, drag them both out of this place before the clown, which has retreated back to its perch on the circus-stage from Hell, can come after them again. His fingers won’t relinquish their grip on the handle no matter how hard he tries. 

His feet move forward against his will. 

“Richie, what are you--?”

He wants to tell Eddie to run, but he can’t open his mouth and can barely make any sound at all, not even a proper grunt as an attempt at warning him. Eddie catches on anyway, eyes going wide as Richie advances, silent and stilted in his movements. Control of his body no longer belongs to him _at all,_ he realizes, breathing harshly through his nose as he watches Eddie turn tail and flee in the opposite direction. In his periphery, the clown’s hands (no longer the paws of a werewolf; filthy satin gloves no longer torn) stretch out in front of him, palms down, fingers splayed, and with a twitch of a finger Richie’s _sprinting_ after Eddie, knife held tight, faster than he thinks he’s ever moved before. 

They collide with enough force that they skid a good metre or so as they hit the ground. “No, _no,_ what the fuck, _don’t--”_ Eddie pleads, but Richie can’t stop himself from grabbing him by the shoulders and rolling him onto his back, even as Eddie fights him the whole way, knees slamming into his stomach and little hands battering at his chest. It’s only when the knife slashes across Eddie’s forearm -- the one without the cast -- and warm blood dribbles out onto the concrete, that he yelps and goes still, wide, shining eyes staring up at him with an emotion Richie's _never_ wanted to see. 

He _never_ wanted Eddie to be afraid of him and he already feels, somewhere in the parts of him that aren’t being puppeteered, that he’ll regret even this small moment for the rest of his life. That Eddie will never forgive him for this and that’s infinitely worse than his inability to even forgive _himself._

Something catches his eye and he jerks his head up to look before it’s being forced down again by invisible strings. The moment lasts long enough for him to _see_ and bile rises in his throat with nowhere to go. _Bev,_ glassy-eyed and limp, floating just like the rest of the kids, not too far from where he is. Helpless and unaware and… Richie dares not think it, but it crosses his mind that she’s probably dead, like the rest of them; will probably float up to join them over time. If she _wasn’t,_ and if he could, he’d cry out to her to save Eddie from him.

(But he _can't,_ and Eddie is just splayed out under him, heaving, _helpless,_ and the knife is a _dreadful_ weight in his hand, isn't it? Or is it _wonderful,_ like the smell of his blood?)

His knees pin Eddie’s arms on either side of him with bruising force and his sewn lips twitch into some bastardization of a smile that he tries to fight _(not him it's **not him** he isn't doing this; he doesn't want this)._ Eddie makes a _gut-wrenching_ noise as the cast crunches and crumbles under his weight, his barely-healed arm trapped inside -- something like a scream that doesn't have a chance to be fully realized as it fizzles out into a whimper. The knife comes up again, the jagged tip of the blade dancing over Eddie’s face while tears well up in his eyes and he whispers, “Richie, _please,_ stop.”

He doesn’t. Instead he pauses with the point of blade just beside his left eye and his breathing picks up all over again as it occurs to him that all it takes to kill a person is to go deep enough into the eye. Straight to the brain. It wouldn’t be hard, and he’d have no control over it anyway. 

_(don't don't don't **please don't please)**_

It _shouldn’t_ come as a relief when he instead presses it to the skin at the corner of his eye and drags _down,_ across his cheek, wrist curling up to connect the cut with the left side of his mouth. It looks -- he shouldn’t give It the satisfaction -- but it looks almost like the clown’s face paint and somehow he can _tell_ It knows that he realizes this. 

There’s another one of those high, terrible snickers from somewhere above and behind him, and all around him. He wishes he could turn the knife on himself when those tears spill over and mix with the blood on Eddie’s cheek, when a frail sob bursts up out of him and pierces straight into Richie’s heart, when he feels Eddie’s body twisting and flailing below him in a desperate attempt at escape. 

When Eddie looks right at him, beautiful brown eyes huge and gleaming, and says, _“Please,_ Richie, _don’t,”_ in a voice so tiny and helpless that he can taste the salt of tears in the back of his own throat. 

The knife moves to his other eye, hovering _close,_ too close, but not sinking home, while Eddie blinks rapidly against the burn of rust so near. Richie's other hand, no longer belonging to him, slides up over his chest to encircle his throat, over that faint line Its claws left on him. The _werewolf_ left on him. _(The Richie-monster)._

_Don’t,_ he tries to demand of himself, as his fingers _squeeze,_ cutting off his oxygen supply, and Eddie’s whole body tenses before stuttering for air. No matter how loud he screams in his own head to _stop,_ to _let go,_ ** _please,_** he only presses harder and then Eddie’s eyes are bulging and his lips are turning blue and his body gives one last survival-instinct heave to try to throw Richie off of him, and instead all he gets is oxidized metal deep in his eye. 

Eddie’s head slams back against the wet ground (the knife-point slips out with a sick _squelch)_ and he _screams --_ a feeble little thing as he tries to just _breathe_ again through the pain, as the pressure of Richie's fingers on his throat disappears -- struggling _more_ now, blood running from his eye down the side of his face while he blinks and blinks and tries to make the pain of it go away but it’s too late. The socket overflows with blood that obscures what’s left of his eye, and all Richie does for several moments that stretch on far too long is sit there, watching, the knife held up and away again but still dripping ruby-bright blood all over Eddie’s cheeks and forehead. 

It’s without any forewarning, for either of them, that he brings it down to puncture through the soft flesh of Eddie’s left cheek, perpendicular to the line he just carved there, and just deep enough for Eddie to taste the bitter rust and metal on his tongue before blood pours over his taste buds. He screams again, quieter but _worse,_ still, the kind of sound that comes within an inch of snapping Richie out of his trance.

Whatever Eddie’s saying is no longer coherent, too disrupted by full-body sobs to make any sense as his legs thrash under Richie and bloodied tears pour down his face. His chest rattles and wheezes, and through the haze still settling in over his brain, Richie can remember the fanny pack tossed into the weeds growing wild around the Well House, the inhaler inside, the medicine Eddie needs to _breathe--_ _but that doesn’t matter now, does it?_ he thinks, or perhaps the clown tells him, as he lifts the knife once more and aims the point at the soft part of his belly, just below his ribs, angled upwards to do _just the right amount of damage._

Richie tries to scream. Tries to stop himself. Tries to look at Bev again if only to beg for help with eyes she won’t even see. Tries to apologize to Eddie without words, but Eddie isn’t _looking_ at him; Eddie’s got his eyes squeezed shut and he’s preoccupied with trying to force air into his lungs, enough so that he startles badly when Richie’s hand finally pushes forward, agonizingly _slow,_ and a high, keening whine is ripped from him as the blade sinks in, a little bit at a time. It slides through flesh and muscle and into the vulnerable organs beneath, hot blood bubbling up and coating Richie’s fingers as the knife finally comes to a halt with the blunt edge of the handle pressed firm against his belly; as far as it will go.

Eddie’s mouth has fallen open wide but no sound will come out, then all at once he _gasps_ and then coughs, and blood spurts out onto his lips and chin and cheeks. 

_(Remember in the house on Neibolt and the blood, the black blood, like tar, and the fear so deep it burned in your heart? Remember thinking you’d lost him? Remember being afraid for him? Remember how much you--?)_ Richie doesn’t realize he’s crying until a few of his own tears splash onto his wrist. He releases the knife all at once, leaving it settled under Eddie’s ribs just like that, and instead his hands reach up cup his cheeks, covered in sticky blood that contrasts sharply with the ashen pallor of his skin. Eddie’s good eye stares up at him, dazed and bright with tears, through wet eyelashes, and Richie is _burning_ inside his heart again, but this time it’s _so much worse,_ because it’s real and it _hurts;_ Eddie's blood sticking under his fingernails and Eddie’s tiny voice pleading senselessly, all while he’s helpless to prevent any of this. 

One of his thumbs caresses Eddie’s cheek, against his will, smearing more blood over his freckles and all Eddie can do is let out a breathy whimper. He’s not fighting back anymore. Instead he’s simply gone limp under Richie, and the one eye gazing at him is beginning to take on the same unfocused quality as Bev’s.

He’s giving up.

_This is good._

**_This is what It wants._ **

Richie can’t shake those thoughts out of his head. Something inside of him is withering away as he watches Eddie bleed and cry and struggle to breathe beneath him. He strokes his cheek again.

Leans down and kisses him.

His lips and his stitches come away stained red, and a heart-rending sob works its way out of Eddie, so Richie silences him with another kiss. His heart slams against his ribs. The urge to vomit is overwhelming; harsh in contrast with the numbing haze working its way through his entire body, trying to quiet his brain. He’d never do this of his own free will, would never let himself act on those feelings, and for it to happen like _this,_ with Eddie suffering at his hands, with Eddie looking betrayed and dismayed beneath him -- Richie cries harder, shoulders shaking. _There’s a monster in Derry and its name is Richie Tozier, and Richie knows this and has seen it; Richie has **been** the monster and he’s **fled** from the monster (has seen what he could **be** in the basement of the Well House and on the breast of a Derry High jacket with hideous orange pom-poms up the front) and sometimes it does terrible, ugly things and sometimes _ **_he does terrible, ugly things_ **

_like love another b--_

“Richie, please…” It’s so quiet it’s nearly impossible to hear, but it shakes him to his core regardless. He has no way of stopping this. Eddie’s caught on to that, he _has_ to have, because if he thinks Richie is doing this of his own volition then… then… Richie can’t bear to think of that. 

He can’t let Eddie die thinking Richie _wanted_ to hurt him. 

(He doesn’t have a choice.)

Doesn’t have a _choice,_ when his hands slide down from Eddie’s face and take hold of his throat again, when the clown laughs and _laughs_ from everywhere around them at once and it grates on his eardrums. A scream builds up inside him, higher and higher, swelling up but with nowhere for all the pressure to go. No release. He's afraid of shaking apart under the force of it -- his shoulders tremble, his lungs ache and seize, tears burn down his cheeks, but there isn't anything more because it's all _trapped_ in there, trapped the same way he's got Eddie right now, and he knows the moment the opportunity arises he's going to turn that knife on himself and give it an outlet.

The words of comfort he’d share if he _could_ die in his voiceless throat as his fingers apply pressure and Eddie becomes a blue, gasping mess again. His writhing is feeble at best, now, with the enormous knife embedded deep in his abdomen, draining all his lifeblood out of him while he struggles for air against the terrible strength Richie suddenly possesses -- as he squeezes at his windpipe until it’s distorted and discoloured, and then keeps squeezing. 

Eddie’s good eye flutters shut and even then he can’t let go, not even when he’s gone too still and too pale and there’s nothing _left_ in him anymore. 

Something awful and hollow opens up inside of him, threatens to swallow him whole, and he plans to _let_ it. He doesn’t think anything has _ever_ hurt this much before. Not so deep into his bones and his heart and his lungs. Not so _potently._ The haze lifts from his brain all at once, and he _really_ takes in Eddie’s body underneath him, yanking his hands back like he’s been burned (like he can undo it all if he just lets go), still unable to scream but feeling it caught in his chest anyway, ready to burst out at the earliest opportunity.

“Richie!” Someone calls his name but it isn’t the clown, and when he tries to turn his head to look he finds himself tipping backwards onto the concrete, teeth clacking together as his head collides with it, darkness pouring in from all sides. 

“Richie!” Bill cries again, and a hand on his shoulder startles him back to wakefulness. 

He jumps so hard that Bill almost gets an elbow to the face as he’s scrambling to stand, spinning in a full circle as he searches for Eddie’s body, for the clown, for Bev, for--

Eddie stands just behind Bill’s right shoulder, peering around him at Richie with wide eyes. Richie makes some kind of wild, broken noise in his throat at the fresh and awful memory of those eyes closing forever, one obscured by the _blood_ and the swelling. He must be dreaming. Or maybe he _was_ dreaming, and _this_ is reality.

He hopes to _God_ this is reality. 

He all but shoves Bill aside to drag a confused Eddie into an embrace, head falling onto his shoulder as the first sob bubbles up out of him -- the stitches are gone, he half-realizes, too caught up in holding onto Eddie while he’s _alive and unharmed_ to care. “Richie?” Eddie says, tentative, arms coming up to hug him back, and Richie just falls apart, just like that. All the strength goes out of his limbs and Eddie isn’t quick enough to keep them both balanced so he tips over onto his ass with an ‘ _oof!’,_ Richie landing on top of him.

“I’m so sorry,” he tries to say, except it just comes out garbled and mostly incoherent. He feels the hurt swelling up against his ribs like wildfire, trying to escape, and it’s all he can do to just cry _harder_ in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure. Eddie starts rubbing his back at one point and he has to -- _has to_ \-- lean back to look, to _make sure_ it’s him, make sure he’s okay, he’s… “I’m so sorry,” he cries again, chest still heaving, voice still barely-there. 

Eddie looks appropriately bewildered. “It’s okay, Richie. You didn’t hurt me. You have nothing to apologize for,” he offers, small and uncertain, frowning as Richie’s hands press to his cheeks -- no blood; no tears; no fear-cold, death-pale skin; just a spray of freckles from long summer days in the sun. 

And Richie doesn’t know where to go from there. He’s half-aware of the rest of the Losers discovering Bev floating a bare few metres away, of the commotion of dragging her back down to them, but he can’t look away from Eddie and he doesn’t know how to tell him, _“I would never hurt you,”_ without having to offer an in-depth explanation, which he doesn’t think he’ll ever be prepared for. 

Would Eddie even forgive him?

If it wasn’t real, is there anything to forgive?

It’s only as his thumb smooths across the skin under his eye that Richie realizes this isn’t _okay,_ he can’t just touch Eddie like this, _especially_ not after the way he was _just--_ His hands jerk back and he freezes (as Eddie blinks, blinks again, staring up at him, eyes clear and deep brown and untouched and _not_ overflowing with tears _he_ caused) because _Richie’s pinning him to the floor and what if he hurts him again what if_ **_It_ ** _is still controlling him what if it’s for real this time what if he can’t keep his friends safe?_ He freezes and Eddie doesn’t know why, doesn’t understand at all, doesn’t see what Richie sees, doesn’t feel the terror mounting inside of him or understand its origin.

He _freezes,_ and Eddie says, again, “You have nothing to apologize for.” And Richie _wants_ to believe him -- he drags his gaze away from the _blood drying under his own fingernails --_ his heart working overtime (crawling bit by bit up his throat to suffocate him) as he watches a too-bright smile stretch across Eddie’s face. “It’s okay, Richie. You didn’t hurt me.”

* * *


End file.
